by Don Travis
“Hullo, Mr. Vinson.”
I looked up to see Spence hovering nearby. I nodded to a chair. “Join me for a few minutes.”
He threw a leg over the back of the chair like he was mounting a horse and settled in his seat. “Your boy’s looking good out there.”
“If you’re referring to Paul, I have to agree.”
“Best-looking stud in the place.”
I glanced at him, half expecting him to add “except for me.” But he merely smiled. “Once again, I have to agree,” I said.
“If I didn’t know he was taken, I’d be out there rooting around. Doesn’t it bother you he’s rubbing thighs with women?”
“It doesn’t pay to hold the leash too tightly.” If Spence wanted to spar, I’d spar.
“Just tell me when you let him off the leash, will you?”
“I wouldn’t wait around.”
Another slow smile. “I never do.”
“I’ll just bet you don’t. Where’s your friend tonight?”
“What friend?”
“Rocky Lodeen,” I said, taking in the not unpleasant alcohol and sweat aroma of the C&W.
“His shop got a rush order. He’s putting in some major overtime. Said he might be here later, depending on the time.”
“This one of your watering holes?”
Spence glanced around. “Couple of times a month. I like the dancing. And the band.”
“Your friend’s an interesting guy.”
“Rocky? How’s that?”
“Understand he was a standout in a battle over in Afghanistan in May and here in Albuquerque a couple of months later.” I allowed my voice to rise so he could take it as a question if he wanted.
Spence shrugged. “Mustered out. Happens every day.”
“Not before your enlistment’s up.”
His frown looked real, not studied. “You saying he had a problem with the Army? Hell, he was gung-ho from the time I met him.”
“At CNM, if I remember right?”
“Yeah. In the coffee shop. Heard me talking to some dude about Afghanistan and moseyed over to put in his two cents.” He laughed at the recollection. “We even figured out we were in the same place at the same time in a couple of instances. Maybe even in the same DFAC but never met up.” He reacted to my confused look and explained. “Dining facility. So Rocky took an FOB taxi, did he?” That required another explanation. “That’s a vehicle leaving a forward operating base. How about that? You telling me Rocky got the bum’s rush from the unit?”
I shook my head, marveling how each war develops its own jargon. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“I will.”
“I hear he’s a Los Angeles dude,” I said. “Do you know what brought him here?”
“Even though he was Army, he told me he once had temp duty at the Air Force base… you know, Kirtland… for a few days and liked the town. When they turned him loose, he headed straight here.”
Paul showed up fresh-faced from dancing in time to receive a long once-over. Spencer Spears lusted after my companion in a major way. I understood. After all, so did I.
I THOUGHT of Pedro as we approached our neighborhood. Paul was usually charged up after dancing, something that benefited both Pedro and me. But as we turned onto Post Oak Drive, I spotted a dark Cougar parked in front of my house.
“Uh-oh,” Paul mumbled, sitting straighter in his seat. “Lodeen?”
“Looks like it.” Damn, I was going to have to unlist my home number, something I’d threatened for years but never got around to doing.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Park in the driveway like usual. But keep a sharp eye out. Damn! My pistol’s in the Impala’s trunk. You get it while I distract him.”
My back prickled as Paul pulled up behind my car in the driveway. I got out of the Charger with an eye on the dark car parked nearby. A dome light and a clanging bell warned the driver’s side door of the Cougar had opened. The old wound on my thigh throbbed as Rocky exited his car.
“Hey there, Mr. Vinson. Need to talk to you a minute, okay?”
“Sure. Come on in.” I headed for the front of the house. Rocky met me at the steps. He didn’t offer a hand but didn’t appear to be holding a weapon. I felt exposed as he trailed me onto the porch. Perhaps perceiving my anxiety, he stood where I could see him as I keyed the lock, stepped aside, and motioned him inside. Paul came through the door and pressed the Ruger into my hand. I stuffed it into the belt at my back as I closed the door.
Rocky paused, and I motioned him to the left into the den. “Drink?”
“Beer if you have it.”
“Coors okay?”
“Sure.”
Paul went for drinks at the small wet bar while I settled in my recliner across from Rocky on the sofa. Paul handed around the drinks and sat in the other recliner.
Rocky popped the tab and took a sip before speaking. “Hear you talked to my boss yesterday.”
“That’s right.”
“How come?”
“I’m an investigator. Got a license from the state and all that. That’s what licensed investigators do… talk to people.”
“Cut the bullshit. Why’re you asking questions about me?”
“Simple. I’m investigating anyone who spent any time at the Belhaven house.”
“I was only there a couple of times,” Rocky said.
“But you were there a couple of times. And you have a relationship with one of the regulars at the house.” I paused, recalling how Rocky spoke to Sarah at the police station. “Maybe two.”
“Relationship? Hell. Me’n Spence are friends.” He arched an eyebrow. “Well… relationship if that’s what you call screwing around a couple of times.” He frowned. “Two? Who else? I didn’t know the old man. Only met him once.”
“Sarah Thackerson.”
“Sarah? I never said more’n half a dozen words to the woman.”
“You said more than six words to her at the police station the other day.”
“Just asking if she’d seen Spence. You can ask her yourself. So what did my boss say about me?”
I fed him his own line. “You can ask him yourself. Why did the Army boot you so fast, Rocky?”
He flushed, his gray eyes sparkling. “We decided we wasn’t right for one another.”
“Takes a lot for the military to decide that. I know. I was a Marine. Didn’t matter how much I screwed up, they held on to me.”
Rocky gave an exaggerated sigh. “Claimed I was harming relations with the hajis.”
“Hajis?” I asked.
“You know, the LNs, local nationals. The Afghanis.”
“How did you do that?”
He pursed his lips and lowered his head. “Had trouble telling the friendlies from the Ali Babas.”
“You shot at them all?”
“Wasn’t about to let nobody make an angel outta me. After a couple of days, they all gave me a wide berth.”
A silence grew while I considered that. Then Paul gave my thoughts voice.
“The Army could have handled the problem by shipping you stateside. But they discharged you.”
Rocky finished his beer and put the can on the coffee table. His movements seemed studied… controlled. He leaned back on the sofa. “Called me a fucking hero at Barawala Kalay. Then I shoot a couple of hajis, and the next thing I know I’m at BIAP being hustled on a troop transport back home. Hardly get my boots on the ground before I’m discharged.” He glanced at both of us in turn. “Not no dishonorable. A general.”
His facial expression told me he considered them about the same thing. Here was a man who yearned to be back among his comrades. As a silence built, he returned from wherever he’d been. “Anyway stop poking around in my business. I ain’t bothering nobody, and I don’t want nobody bothering me.”
“I heard you were a stunt driver,” Paul said.
“Stuntman.”
“Same thing. When was the last time you stunt drove
?”
“That was over before my Army days.”
“But it’s like riding a bicycle, isn’t it? You don’t ever forget how to do it.”
“What you getting at?”
“Two months ago somebody deliberately T-boned me at Copper and San Mateo in a stolen car. The driver disappeared before my head cleared.”
“How come you say it was deliberate? Hell, you know Albuquerque drivers. They bang into one another all the time.”
“It was deliberate. Car shot right out on San Mateo in time to hit me broadside.”
Rocky’s stare gave me a look into his psyche. His voice dropped in pitch. “If it’d been me, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
Conviction or braggadocio?
SUNDAY SHOULD have been a pleasant day, but it wasn’t. Paul and I couldn’t agree on the purpose behind Rocky’s late-night visit Saturday. I couldn’t even agree with myself. At first I considered it an angry confrontation—absent the anger—about our prying into his life. The next moment it appeared an effort to show himself an open book… no harm done. Or perhaps a recon of hostile territory to plan retribution. Had the signals been that mixed? Was he just a complicated human being? Of course, being a simple human being was complex enough. What made him so hard to read?
I’d expected resentful anger from Rocky but encountered none. More like a halfhearted warning coupled with acceptance that we’d piddle in his life to our hearts’ content. But when challenged about a staged wreck, his dander rose. I hadn’t liked what I saw in his eyes when that happened. I believe I glimpsed his soul then, a tormented thing dark with hate and fiery with wrath. He killed the enemy in battle and killed in the peace of the moment without distinction between the two. This was why the Army discharged him instead of simply shipping him home.
At this point I had no idea if Rocky Lodeen was involved in Belhaven’s killing or not. Even so I vowed my weapon would no longer be locked away in the trunk of my car. His perception of the danger I represented to him counted more than the reality.
Paul and I managed to salvage some of the day on the country club’s tennis courts where both of us went above and beyond our usual efforts. We quit at two sets each, unable to muster the energy to play the tie breaker.
Chapter 26
MONDAY MORNING I sent Paul to APD to check the fingerprints on the beer can Rocky Lodeen drank from Saturday night. There was no reason to doubt his identity, but an investigation is an investigation. Cover all the points. He returned to confirm that Rocky Lodeen was, indeed, the former Sergeant Rockwell B. Lodeen of the famous Screaming Eagles.
Charlie arranged for Alan Mendoza and Tim Fuller, two retired cops we sometimes used for overflow work, to keep a discreet eye on Rocky. I toyed with the idea of assigning one of them to surveil Spencer Spears, but Rocky was of more interest at the moment.
“Who’s going to pay for this?” Hazel asked.
“If our client won’t, we will,” I said.
Apparently my tone was enough to keep her from coming back at me with anything more than “Humph.”
Even so she got her pound of flesh when she put a file on my desk and asked me to handle it. It was the type of case I dislike the most and only take from really good clients who give me repeat business. A bail skip.
Chowderhead Jones fled Charleston, South Carolina, ahead of his trial for manslaughter. He was almost apprehended in Memphis, Tennessee, at the home of a cousin, and again in Texarkana, Texas, where he was staying with an ex-girlfriend. Chowderhead slipped away both times but was known to have another cousin in Albuquerque, and he seemed to be heading west.
One reason I don’t like bail-jumper cases is that usually the individuals involved are the dregs of the criminal caste, the lees of humanity. Not always, of course, but it pretty well sums up my experience with such cases. More often than not, they involve violence. Not only because of the quality—or lack thereof—of the jumper, but also because bounty hunters have reputations—whether earned or not—of employing muscle and dirty tricks in the pursuit of their own brand of justice. Learning the Albuquerque cousin was named Muley Jones, made me question the mettle of this whole branch of the larger Jones family. I’ve known some likable Joneses, bright Joneses, even brilliant Joneses, but apparently this branch shouldn’t be hard to keep up with.
Muley Jones lived on a difficult-to-find street in the Barelas area. Bad news, because the people in such a neighborhood watched out for one another. Jones would know I was searching him out minutes after I hit the neighborhood. That was my reasoning for walking straight up to the door and knocking on the frame. A short man with salt-and-pepper hair opened the door and glared at me… mulishly.
“Mr. Jones?” I ventured.
“Who’s asking?”
I went through the ID procedure, hauling out my extremely unimposing private investigator’s license, and as I suspected, he wasn’t impressed.
“If you’re here about Chowderhead, forget it. If he shows up, I’ll haul him to the cops myself.”
“You’re not on good terms with your cousin?”
“Bastard’s owed me six hundred dollars for six hundred years.”
I handed him a card. “In that case if he shows up, don’t call the cops. Call my office, and you might recover some of what’s owed you.”
Sometimes skip cases aren’t difficult at all. Fewer than twenty-four hours later, Muley phoned and said his cousin was lashed to a kitchen chair awaiting my arrival. What would have happened if Chowderhead brought his cousin the six hundred he owed? Probably the same thing. Muley would consider anything I gave him as interest.
THANKSGIVING DAY was almost upon us, and neither Alan nor Tim had much to report on Rocky Lodeen. The man apparently made the circuit from work to the Hogshead and back home a daily routine. His circle of friends seemed to be Spencer Spears, period. He hadn’t been seen in the company of a woman other than barflies hitting him and his buddy up for drinks. But none of the women ever went home with either man. I mentally shook my head. My gaydar was pretty well honed, and while it was no surprise Spence and Rocky occasionally got it on, I couldn’t see either one of them being satisfied with that as a permanent arrangement.
The fact I’d noted the other day that Spence’s and Sarah’s apartments were literally around the corner from one another prompted me to haul out an Albuquerque street map and plot the position of Rocky’s apartment. In so doing, I discovered something interesting. All three apartments were at different street addresses on the same block. Furthermore, the rear entrances to the buildings were merely feet away from each other. Pulling up Google Earth on my computer, I zoomed in on the block and found what appeared to be a small neighborhood park in the space behind the buildings. Either man could have left by the rear of his apartment building and made his way to the others’ abode without being observed by anyone from the street. This complicated things.
Rocky Lodeen had no motive for killing John Pierce Belhaven unless the writer hit on him and Rocky found it offensive. Doubtful. But possible. Belhaven was genteel; Rocky was rough trade… but attractive bait. So it could have happened, but my impression of Rocky was he wouldn’t be offended. He’d probably get a kick out of romping with Spence’s sugar daddy. He certainly wouldn’t be offended enough to bash Belhaven’s head in and set the body afire.
If Rocky did the killing, there had to be something in it for him. Like money. Like a $10,000 payment on his new car. Which pointed me right back to Spence Spears.
But here I ran into a problem. Why would Spence need Rocky to handle Belhaven? He could do the deed and avoid exposing himself to possible blackmail from a partner in crime. Physically Spence was capable of killing Belhaven, but did he have the mental makeup? He’d undoubtedly killed in Afghanistan, but a different set of morals applied there. On the other hand, his buddy Rocky Lodeen got booted from the Army for being unable to differentiate between the two ethical premises.
Sarah, however, would probably need someone like Rocky t
o handle Belhaven. But why should she—or Spence, for that matter—want to kill the golden goose. Both prospered from their relationship with the author. Each lived a comfortable existence with a steady income by doing work he or she enjoyed. And they both willingly serviced the carnal needs of their employer. Had jealousy or envy gained the upper hand with one of them?
By their own admission, both had prior knowledge of their $250,000 bequest in Belhaven’s will, but each denied knowing of a life insurance policy. Despite her claim, Sarah almost certainly knew because she paid Belhaven’s bills. Or at least prepared them for payment. But this didn’t necessarily hold water. I owned a policy paid each month by an automatic charge to my bank account. She might know of the payment, but not what it represented. Still she filed his paperwork, and a folder marked insurance was likely to provoke curiosity. The chances were good that she knew of the policies. Would she tell Spencer of his? The interplay between the two of them—or lack thereof—was becoming of more interest.
PAUL AND I customarily ate Thanksgiving dinner with Charlie and Hazel, and this year was no exception. Paul typically took a pineapple salad he whipped up from his mother’s recipe. All I contributed were pumpkin and pecan pies from a local restaurant specializing in “home-cooked” pies. In my defense, the Village Inn made excellent pies. I’d had to preorder to be assured I would have the privilege of paying for them.
The Weeks’ modest, redbrick pitched-roof home collected the rich aromas of Hazel’s cooking and released them to us slowly. Turkey and old-fashioned cornbread stuffing dominated, and soon hints of cinnamon and sweet potatoes and the yeasty aroma of rolls came through. I hadn’t really been hungry… until then. Paul headed for the kitchen to help Hazel, while I settled in the living room with Charlie.
This was traditionally a time for strengthening personal ties and feeding appetites, not for discussing business. Until after dinner, that is, which was around 3:00 p.m. By that time no one knew how much conversation anyone else absorbed as we all sat around in a gastronomic stupor. Drunk on food, as it were.
